


Four-In-Hand.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Category: Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe, Divorce, Grief/Mourning, Sedoretu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:15:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24794494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: Maggie's sedoretu breaks up three years before Sam dies.
Relationships: Maggie Collins/Jim Sterling, Maggie Collins/Nathan Ford/Jim Sterling, Maggie Collins/Nathan Ford/Jim Sterling/Jim Sterling's Ex-Wife, Nathan Ford/Jim Sterling
Comments: 14
Kudos: 52





	Four-In-Hand.

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for canonical bereavement. Sedoretus are from three short stories by Ursula K. Le Guin. In them, people are either of the Morning or Evening moiety, and a sedoretu is a marriage made up of a Morning man, a Morning woman, an Evening man, and an Evening woman. The cultural norm allows sexual relationships between moieties but not within them. You share the moiety of your mother. In this fic, Maggie, Sterling, and Sophie are Evening, and Nate, Olga, and Olivia are Mornings. So in this fic, Maggie/Sterling is queer, but Nate/Sterling isn't.

1.

Maggie's sedoretu breaks up three years before Sam dies. Olga's had enough of them and she takes Olivia with her.

Then Sam dies and Nate leaves, too.

And then it's just her and Jim, two Evenings whose Mornings have left them.

2.

For a while, they're more like roommates than what remains of a marriage. Maggie walks through a fog; Jim pulls her through to grief counseling, through to recovering a life for herself, but they barely acknowledge what was between them and isn't there anymore. Without Olga, without Nate, without Olivia, without Sam--

The first time Maggie thinks this marriage just might make it, Jim is making one of his grimly dark jokes and Maggie laughs and she doesn't look around to see how Olga and Nate are reacting and neither, she realizes, is Jim. Jim's just looking at her. He's not talking to their missing sedoretu; he's only talking to her.

Okay, she thinks. Okay. Maybe we can. 

It's not anything close to easy. Nate came to one counseling session and didn't come back. Jim keeps a mask of a slight smile all throughout it, giving a professional face to the professionals. Maggie cries unabashedly; at home, Jim puts his arms around her. At home, he murmurs into her hair. In public, they may as well be strangers, except for the way, sometimes, Jim will slip his hand into hers and squeeze and she'll squeeze back and she'll remember that there's still someone in her corner. Jim's not gonna leave her. She's not gonna leave him. There's still a marriage here, even if the sedoretu is broken.

Olga brings Olivia to visit once a month. Nate hasn't been using his visitation rights, Olga tells them. Olga's judgmental frown is familiar company in Maggie's life, she wishes she could have it back. She wishes it all would come back.

It won't come back. Olga says, she's gotten a marriage proposal from a broken sedoretu. Olga says, she's going to marry them next year.

Olga says, we're going to need to renegotiate custody. Her new sedoretu is like her old one; everyone travels constantly. Olivia would start being homeschooled. They're going to need to work out calendars.

Maggie looks at Olivia and knows she has to be strong for her. Olivia's been through so much. Maggie won't be the one to add more stress onto her life.

Maggie forces a smile to her face. "Congratulations," she says to Olga. It might just be sincere, if she pretends hard enough.

Olga remarries. Olivia moves out of the country. Monthly visits become semi-yearly.

Nate comes back into her life.

And Maggie starts sleeping with Jim.

3.

Maggie's never fucked in her moiety before. She's never--

Well, she's also never stolen anything, and that had been fun, even if Jim hadn't agreed with her. It had all come out well for Jim in the end anyway. He'd gotten himself a promotion. He's still desperately mooning over Nate.

Maggie's gotten over Nate, but it looks like she's gotten over him enough to slip herself into his place in their marriage. The first time she fucks Jim, he'd gasped, eyes wide, and she'd brushed away his tears.

The fifth time she fucks Jim, his fingers interlace with hers and he smiles and Maggie's heart almost breaks.

Her sedoretu is broken, her marriage is evolving, her daughter is overseas, and her son is dead.

In the depths of Maggie's grief about the death of their son, she's wondered if this is what happens when you marry two men who make their livings going around denying other people's insurance claims. That's Nate's and Jim's life's work. And now it's come back to bite them. Now, as far as Nate's concerned, it's what killed their son. Maggie isn't as hopeful as all that; in the parents group, she's heard so much about treatments that never worked, about miracle cures that killed, she's heard about everything people have done to eke out just one more day with their children, all the desperation in the world. Maggie knows what experimental means, she knows that fluttering hope and how quickly it can turn toxic, just as quickly as it can prove a miracle. Nate's sure that it could have helped. Nate's sure that their son, their dying son, was murdered by the industry he used to work for.

And maybe it wouldn't have saved Sam. But they should still have been able to try. They should have had the chance. She knows there was no guarantee of success; that's what no cure means. And it's too damn late to have any hope. She can only be angry they never got a chance to try. She can only be enraged that the system that cost them their life savings to save their son still fucked them over in the end.

And Maggie's been in therapy for years for a reason. She'd thought she'd done everything she could. Now she knows there was something else. Maybe something could have saved her son, saved her sedoretu, saved everything. Maybe not. But they never got to try. When you have a child as sick as Sam was, you start grieving long before the funeral. She would have given anything for more time, yes, but she would also have given anything for more hope. She hadn't had either of them.

She tells Jim it's not an ultimatum. She tells Jim that she's not leaving him. She's not Olga. She's not Nate. She's not frustrated with him and she's not full of self-loathing and rage problems. It's not that. It's the taste in her mouth. It's the betrayal she can feel down to her bones.

She tells Jim to start looking for another job.

4.

Olga dies an ocean away from them, a casualty of an assassination attempt on her new sedoretu. Olivia survives, but can only contact them through Jim's Interpol channels. She wants to come home to them. Maggie's not eager for an international custody battle with someone like Robert Livingston, but if ever there was a reason to have an ex-husband who is an internationally-wanted thief, it's this.

Nate hasn't seen Olivia since Sam's funeral, so Maggie can only wonder what Olivia thinks of Nate coming along with Jim to rescue her. She hopes Nate will come all the way back with them, but when Jim shows up, it's with their daughter and without their ex-husband.

Maggie folds Olivia into her arms and then smooths her hands down Olivia's hair, longer than it used to be, taller than she used to be. "Welcome home, sweetheart," she says. "We've been so worried."

After what she's been through, Olivia wants to stay close. She sits the GED to get it over with and then refuses to look at colleges any further away than ten miles. Olga and her new sedoretu had expected Olivia to go to Cambridge, but Olivia isn't going to the next state over, let alone across the pond.

It's hard with only the two of them when there should be four, but Maggie and Jim work their schedules so that one of them is always with Olivia. Maggie could take her with her if she needed to, but Olivia has been swept around the world too much lately. If Olivia feels like she needs to have a home on solid ground, then that's what she'll have. There's really no rush; Olivia's only barely seventeen. If she wants to spend a few years doing nothing but ruthlessly beating people at chess online, then Maggie's fine with that.

They all start going back to family therapy again. This time, Maggie makes Jim talk about his feelings. Maggie worries how Olivia'll react to Maggie sleeping with Jim now, but Olivia takes the opportunity to tell her that she prefers her own moiety, too, and then that's a whole other conversation. Maggie's so proud of her, everything she's been through, and they cry together for Olga, for Sam, for the family they used to have.

They've got their daughter back, but Nate still doesn't visit. He's reliable in an emergency, but he won't come for birthdays. Maggie accepts that; Jim still bristles, but Jim still wants more from Nate than Maggie does. Maggie's happy to have Nate as a friend and thinks their relationship is better that way. She'd never take him back. Jim, though? Jim would take Nate back in a heartbeat, but would never want to be his friend.

They settle back in as parents, an aching gap where others used to be. She misses the way their sedoretu used to be. She misses the life they'd had, before it all fell apart. But there's joys here, too. They have their daughter back.

Olga used to bring them back forgeries from work trips. When some of them start disappearing into Olivia's room, Maggie brings the rest of them out of the basement and replaces them on the walls and the mantle. They also disappear, which is fine, but it leaves the house looking a bit bare.

Maggie's a curator; getting more artwork isn't a problem. Getting art that means family to her is harder. Olga used to have a lot to say about how beauty is its own value, how who painted or sculpted the piece shouldn't be so important, about how if it's meaningful, it shouldn't be worthless just because it's a copy. People who collect valuable art, Olga used to say, were never interested in looking at it, they just wanted the bragging rights. It didn't matter if it was made five minutes ago or five hundred years ago so long as it made you feel something. Olga used to think Maggie took it too seriously and that Nate and Jim never took it seriously enough; they only cared if they got the artifact back so the company wouldn't have to pay the claim, they didn't care what the artwork was or represented, if it was beautiful or disturbing or worth the reputation at all. It would be dismissive of Olga's memory for Maggie to buy anything worth more than twenty bucks to replace the artificial masterpieces. It would be equally dismissive to buy things that didn't mean anything to them.

When Sophie calls for her help with a con, Maggie names her price. And so in return for setting someone up at an airport bar, Maggie gets a crate of paintings and sculptures that Sophie swears up and down are forgeries. She tells Jim she won't check. Sophie is Nate's new Evening marriage, even if it's not official yet. Sophie is part of their family. This counts.

Nate and Jim have always flirted by playing games. It used to be chess, now it's higher stakes. Whenever Nate or Sophie or any of the team calls, Maggie always says yes. She's getting to enjoy games herself. And she loves the way Jim growls her name after he finds out; the sex is amazing. She understands now why Nate and Jim flirt this way. It's a thrill. It's a shot of adrenaline. Maggie likes it, but only in moderation. She could never do it full-time. She could never do what Sophie does. She could never keep up with Nate these days, and she doesn't want to. Nate's too self-destructive. She would never marry him again, but this new way of being in each other's lives works, too. And Sophie's the one who makes it work.

Sophie could so easily be the glue that would hold a new sedoretu together. It's a shame Maggie wouldn't marry Nate again; she'd marry Sophie.

Maybe Olivia's right. Maybe Maggie's only into her own moiety these days. Or maybe her type these days is just anyone but Nate Ford.

5.

Jim comes back from a work trip and says he might need to get another job.

"Mm," Maggie says. "If you get one with more predictable travel, I can start taking on more consulting work again." She flicks her eyes toward Olivia's room. Olivia's lately been getting really into combinatorics, but she's still resistant to going to college. Still, she's started internet-dating a Morning girl who lives in Atlanta, so Maggie hopes Olivia might be more open to traveling again soon. But even if Olivia never wants to get on a plane again, if Jim's not traveling on a moment's notice, things will settle down in other ways. "Did Nate say hi?"

Jim does the blustering he normally does when Nate comes up, which means that yes, Nate did say hi, but that Jim and Nate spent so much time flirting with each other that the rest of the world fell away. Nate's never going to come back to them, but Jim still wishes he would. "How'd you know it was Nate?"

Maggie shrugs. "Well, you want to leave Interpol, and last week, Nate sent one of those 'If I die, I want you to know I'm sorry' e-mails that he does." It had been as rambling as it usually is, about half as drunken, and had disappeared a couple days ago, so Maggie knows that at least Hardison survived long enough to clean up Nate's tracks.

"Of course he did," Jim says, exasperated and fond.

Maggie steps forward and brushes a kiss against his lips. "Now," she says, not moving back, "I think we should celebrate."

"What are we celebrating?" Jim asks, but puts his hands on her hips.

Maggie smiles. "Our family." 

It's not what it used to be, but it's still a masterpiece to her for all the work they've put into it. And that's worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> [this post on dreamwidth](https://lannamichaels.dreamwidth.org/1128499.html); [this post on tumblr](https://lannamichaels.tumblr.com/post/621296893292593152/four-in-hand-2272-words-by-lanna-michaels)


End file.
